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A quote: “Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.” ~~ Sun Tzu
I’ll start with a story …
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Summer waned, days shortening towards fall. They gathered under the trees at the edge of the meadow where wild blackberries were finally ripening. The nascent sunrise was ready to turn the eastern sky pearly pink.
Old woman looked towards the bushes, paused then walked purposely towards them, waiting. A nod and they hurried across, gathering as quickly as they could before the sun crested the mountains.
A shot! Old woman crumpled. They scattered into the trees still holding their baskets. There was always the risk of Greymen traps. Today they were unlucky.
But they wouldn’t be followed. Another day free.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped and modified, Adobe Stock standard license.
GWB says: Dangit! Who ate all the strawberries out my still life setting?!
(OK, way fewer than 100 words. 😉 )
Lewis says: GWB! Perhaps you could donate 89 words to those of us who never count? This is an interesting read every week, is it not? Gets the little grey cells up and about, eh? Hope you find your strawberries!
Cameron says: “When my parents and I left old America, the border guards were spiteful. They took everything and even made us give up our coats. They wanted us broken. My parents never broke and we walked away as free people. The one thing that got missed were the seeds dad smuggled. Wild blackberries and raspberries.
“A few years later, he planted them in the soil here and they quickly grew. We’d harvest them and they always tasted sweeter than sugar.”
The old man smiled at his grandson. “That’s why I still gather them, little one. Because I always remember their value.”
I still remember going berry-picking back on the farm in Iowa. There were blackberry and raspberry briars growing all along the edges of the fields, along the old fence rows and on the banks of the creeks and ditches. We called them wild berries, but they weren’t really. Most of them traced back to someone’s garden, thanks to birds eating the berries and scattering the seeds far and wide.
But there was always a certain sense of adventure in going out and tramping through the weeds, looking for the briar canes scattered at random. Sure, our biggest danger was stepping into the poison ivy here and there, but our big German Shepherd always came along with us, looking very much “on duty” as he watched over us, especially if we were by the deeper watercourses. And the berries we picked always tasted so much sweeter than the ones from the store, or even the you-pick places.
Out here, things are different. You’re not supposed to collect wild food in the state and national forest — but strictly speaking, Sparta Point is NASA land, so those rules don’t apply. Except there’s no clear line demarcating the boundaries around the NASA reservation, so we have to be very careful not to wander too far. And while we might be able to talk our way past a forest ranger, it wouldn’t go so easy if we encountered a mountain lion or a grizzly bear. So I’m quite glad that Spartan always comes with us, pistol loose in its holster and ready for trouble, even if he says he’s enjoying the memories of his own childhood helping his mother pick Siberian berries.
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